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S^Rcprinted from Lippincott's Vik.Okzmv., January, igoj\ 



FRANKLIN IN GERMANY 

By y. G. Rusengarten 

FEANKLIN wrote on June 13, 1766, from London to his wife: 
"To-morrow I set out with my friend. Dr. (now Sir John) 
Priugle, on a journey to Pyrmont, where he goes to drink the 
waters. We must be back at furthest in eight weeks. I purpose to 
leave him at Pyrmont and visit some of the principalities nearest to 
it, and call for him again when the time for our return draws nigh." 
(Sparks's Franklin, Vol. VII., p. 320.) In the collection of Franklin 
Papers at the American Philosophical Society is the original or per- 
haps retained copy (how did busy n.en find time then to keep copies 
of even their letters to their wives?) of this letter, and another of 
October 11, in which he writes to Lis wife: "I received your kind 
letter of August 26. Scarce anyone else wrote to me by that oppor- 
tunity. I suppose they imagin'd I should not be returned from Ger- 
many;" and on December 13: "I wonder you had not heard of my 
return from Germany. I wrote by the August packet and by a ship 
from Holland just as I was coming over." 

When Francis Hopkinson, son of Franklin's friend, reached Lon- 
don late in July, 1766, to begin his studies at the Temple, he found 
that Franklin was in Germany, and he had to wait his return before 
he could advise his father of the kindly welcome given him, due per- 
haps as much to his own success at the College of Philadelphia as to 
his father's recommendation. Franklin was very proud of the college, 
largely his work, and of the remarkable young men who, with Hopkin- 
son, belonged to its first graduates. Sparks says in a note on p. 326 
of Vol. VII. of his " Franklin's Works:" " Franklin had recently made 
a tour in Germany, accompanied by Sir John Pringle, as intimated in 
a preceding letter. He visited Hannover, Gottingen, and some of the 
other principal cities and universities, and received many flattering 
attentions from distinguished perso^is. The following letter affords 
a favorable testimony of the estimation in which he was held by 
learned men in Germany." The original Latin is printed in Sparks; 
the following is a rough translation: 



ET 3oa 

M 

2 Franklin in Germany • > •" ° ll^l 

" S. p. D. John Frederick Hartmann to Dr. Franklin. 

" Often the pleasant recollection returns of the day I 
saw you and talked with you for the first time. I regret 
extremely that I had neither time nor opportunity to show 
you electrical experiments worthy of you. Do not think 
I was at all to blame. Prince Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, 
with whom I have had much correspondence, counted on meet- 
ing you on your visit to Germany, and regrets that he could 
not see you at GiJttingen, and sends you his greetings. He 
reached Gottingen on the very day you left it and thus lost 
the hope of seeing you. Meantime a German prince asks 
me to put up lightning rods on his estates, and I ask you 
for a precise description of your plans in America. You 
shall have all the credit and honor. I want to complete as 
far as I can a history of electricity, and as yours is the 
first name on that subject, I hope to give an account 
worthy of your experiments." 

Dated, with the usual compliments, " Hannover, 1777, Calends of 
October." 

Parton says in his " Franklin" (Vol. I., p. 492) : " Sir John Pringle 
was the Queen's physician and one of Franklin's most intimate com- 
panions," and (p. 506) "probably through him Franklin found means 
to forward papers to the King," and (p. 523) through him Franklin 
presented to the Queen a sample of American silk grown in Pennsyl- 
vania. He also (p. 533) refers to their journey together in Holland 
and (p. 552) to his first visit in Paris with Sir John Pringle. Hale's 
" Franklin and France" says (Vol. I., p. 3) : " The year before [1766] 
Franklin and Sir Jolm Pringle had travelled together very pleasantly 
in the Netherlands and Germany. In 1767 they paid a six weeks' 
visit to Paris." Bigelow in his " Franklin's Works" (Vol. III., p. 468), 
after giving Franklin's letter to his wife of June 13, 1766, says: "It 
is much to be regretted that we have no journal or any satisfactory 
account of Dr. Franklin's visit to the Continent this summer. He 
seems to have made no notes, and to have written no letters during his 
absence, which are calculated in the least to satisfy our curiosity. We 
have, however, a glimpse of him and of his companion while at Got- 
tingen, which illustrates the very distinguished and durable impression 
made in whatsoever society he appeared." In the " Biography of John 
D. Michaelis," p. 102, occurs the following statement, which was trans- 
lated from the fly-leaf of a volume in the Huntington collection of 
Frankliniana in the Metropolitan Museum of New York : " In the 
summer of 1766 I had the opportunity of making two agreeable 
acquaintances. Pringle and Franklin came to Gottingen, and were 
presented to me by student Miinchhausen. I once had a curious con- 
versation with Franklin at the table, when he dined with me. We 
talked much about America, about the savages, the rapid growth of 

P. 

Author. 

'f»rMfi)i 

"flJa''03 



Franklin in Germany 3 

the English colonies, the growth of the population, its duplication in 
twenty-five years, etc. I said that when I was in London in 1741 I 
might have learned more about the condition of the Colonies by English 
books and pamphlets, had I then thought seriously of what I had even 
then expressed to others, that they would one day release themselves 
from England. People laughed at me, but I still believed it. He an- 
swered me with his earnest and expressive face : ' Then you were mis- 
taken. The Americans have too much love for their mother country.' 
I said, ' I believe it, but almighty interest would soon outweigh that love 
or extinguish it altogether.' He could not deny that this was possible, 
but secession was impossible, for all the American towns of importance, 
Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, could be destroyed by bom- 
bardment. This was unanswerable. I did not then suspect that I was 
speaking to the man who, a few years later, outraged in England, 
would take such an active part in the accomplishment of my contra- 
dicted prophecy." To this was appended the following note, presumably 
by student Miinchhausen : " At that time I was studying in Got- 
tingen, and had the opportunity of knowing both men. I remember 
well that Franklin, and I know not wherefore, was much more inter- 
esting to me than Pringle. Just in that summer also Lessing came 
to Gottingen. He, our otherwise great countryman, was far from 
pleasing me as well as both these Englishmen. These Britons, decried 
for their pride, were very sociable and well informed. The German, 
on the contrary, was very haughty and controversial." 



Bigelow also adds the story, told in Hale's " Franklin," that Pringle 
resigned the presidency of the Royal Society rather than yield to the 
King's wish in a matter in wliich the King was wrong in his desire 
to forward the interests of a favored friend at the expense of that 
venerable scientific body. 

The " Life of Sir John Pringle," by Andrew Kippis, prefaced to 
six of his discourses, London, 1783, attests Franklin's wise choice and 
good fortune in having such a friend and fellow-traveller. We meet 
Michaelis in " The American Eevolution and German Literature," 
by John A. Walz, Harvard University, reprinted from Modem Lan- 
guage Notes, Vol. XVI., Baltimore, 1901. He says: "John D. 
Michaelis, the great Orientalist, met Franklin at Gottingen in 1766, 
and in his autobiography speaks very pleasantly about his American 
acquaintance." Michaelis was very glad, however, to get his son an 
appointment as surgeon with the Hessian division of soldiers sent to 
America by the British government when the Revolutionary War was 
being waged, for the pay was very good and he was promised employ- 
ment for life on his return. When his wife met her husband on his 



4 Franklin in Germany 

return from his American expedition, she wrote home of the wretched 
spectacle of the troops shipped to America, and her contempt for the 
Elector who sold his people to get money with which to build palaces 
and provide for his extravagant way of living in them. 

In a Doctor's Thesis by an American we find mention of Franklin 
in Germany. " The Kelation of German Publicists to the American 
War of Independence, 1775-1783. Inaugural Dissertation for the 
Doctor's Degree of the Philosophic Faculty of the University of Leipsie 
submitted by Herbert P. Gallinger, Amherst, Massachusetts, Leipsie, 
1900," is a pamphlet in German of seventy-seven pages, with an addi- 
tional page giving the details of Dr. Gallinger's life. On p. 8, etc., 
he says: " Franklin visited Germany in 1766, and in Gottingen, where 
he met Achenwall and Schlozer, awakened interest for the Colonies." 
In a foot-note he adds : " Achenwall published in the Rannoverian 
Magazine, beginning of 1767, p. 258, etc., ' Some Observations on 
North America and the British Colonies, from verbal information fur- 
nished by Mr. B. Franklin.' " At the close, the struggle between the 
mother country and the colonies is described entirely from the Ameri- 
can point of view. It is clear that Achenwall was convinced by Frank- 
lin. In closing he says : " I doubt not that other men of learning 
in this country have used their acquaintance with this honored man 
[Franklin] as well as I. Could they be persuaded to give the public 
their noteworthy conversation with him, it would be doing the public 
a great benefit." These observations were reprinted twice, in 1769 at 
Frankfurt and Stuttgart, and in 1777 at Helmstedt. They appear to be 
the only account of the dispute over the constitutional questions at 
issue in America in the German language published before 1776. 



Mr. Gallinger's Thesis gives quite an exhaustive account of the later 
publications in Germany on the American struggle for independence, 
and supplies too the names of many men famous in German literature 
who heartily supported the American side. At Cassel, the capital of 
the Elector of Hesse, who sent the largest contingent of German sol- 
diers to America to fight for the British supremacy, there was a group 
of writers defending the American right to appeal to arms. A suc- 
cession of serial publications by Archenliolz and Schlozer and other 
Gottingen professors, who had met Franklin there ten years before the 
outbreak of the Eevolution, gave in full the official and other papers 
issued by Americans and their friends in England and on the Conti- 
nent, even more fully than those of the English government and its 
defenders. Brunswick too, whence the next largest body of soldiers, 
under Kiedesel, came to America, had writers and publishers ready 
to defend the cause of the Americans. Great Britain employed Ger- 



Franklin in Germany 5 

man pamphleteers to justify its treatment of the rebellious colonies. 
Sclilozer printed letters from America, written in 1757, predicting 
the subsequent struggle and attributing the outbreak of the Kevolution 
to the prohibition of the coasting trade, and its continuance to ambi- 
tious factions, not a majority of the people. Franklin's influence, even 
with the Gottingen professors and publicists, was not powerful and 
enduring enough to prevent most of them from taking the side of the 
British government in their writings. 

The close relation between the Hanoverian government and that 
of Great Britain, the King himself Elector of Hanover, may well 
account for the line taken by his Gottingen professors, for it was a 
time of personal government in both countries, and the wish of the 
petty German sovereign was absolute with all his subjects. From 
Berlin, sometimes under the pseudonym of Philadelphia, came pam- 
phlets favoring the American cause, while Hamburg and Frankfurt 
published works on America of all sorts of political views. One author 
said that Franklin spoke with true insight of the American cause. 
Others referred to his published writings as of the highest authority. 
Translations of his scientific and other papers were published in Ger- 
manv, where his name and fame were familiar. 



Berlin at that time had two newspapers, which appeared every other 
day, each of four octavo pages, and in both of them there was a strong 
tone of sympathy for the American cause and hope for its success. The 
English too had, of course, their organs and agencies in Germany, but 
they were mostly limited to a republication of official reports and legal 
arguments in support of the mother country. The Americans had on 
their side the poets, who sang away lustily in their behalf. Schlozer, 
one of the leading editors of news from and about the American 
struggle, and strongly in favor of British rule, claimed that the whole 
loss of German soldiers sold for service in America was only eleven 
thousand eight hundred and fifty-three. Kapp corrects this and 
makes it twelve thousand five hundred and sixty-two from official data, 
and tlio little difference shows that Schlozer must have had access to 
them too. 

No sooner was the war over, than Sprengel, professor in Halle, 
published its history, in 1784, and it was reprinted in that and the 
following years in frequent editions. Berlin followed the hint of 
Frederick the Great in showing hostility to England by expressions 
of friendship for America. Kant sympathized with America, and at 
Konigsberg in 1782 was issued a book that radically justified the Revo- 
lution. Assuming its success, the German publicists gave a great deal 
of attention to the industrial results of independence and foresaw the 



6 Franklin in Germany 

advantages sure to spring from it. Perhaps the most important book 
was Moser's " America After the Peace of 1783," in three volumes, 
Leipsic, 1784, mostly geograpliical and statistical details, but in it 
the learned Professor gravely charges Franklin and his associates with 
perjury tovrards the mother country. Of course, the question of public 
opinion in a country so subdivided as Germany then was is quite 
unlike that which exists to-day, yet it is clear that in spite of the 
influence of professors and editors largely enlisted from one motive 
or another in support of the English cause, there was a strong and 
lively sjTnpathy for that of America. Perhaps a knowledge of the 
Germans sent against them may have justified their hope of a favorable 
result, — at least Freneau's version of Rivington's " Last Will" shows 
the popular opinion, confirmed by current report, in America: 

" To Baron Knyphausen, his heirs and assigns, 
I bequeath my old Hock and my Burgundy wines. 
To a true Hessian drunlcard, no liquors are sweeter, 
And I know the old man is no foe to the creature." 

The German commander who fell at Trenton, Colonel Eahl, was 
notorious for his love of the table, and his negligence to insure the 
safety of his post is attributed to his plentiful potations on Christmas 

Eve. 

♦ 

A recent paper in the Americana Germanica, supplemented by 
that in Modern Language Notes for June, 1901, by Walz, of Harvard, 
attests the influence of Franklin in Germany. Klopstock and Herder, 
Jacobi and Heyne, Schiller and Goethe, all praise him. 

Lafayette in a letter to Franklin, written in 1786, tells him that 
in a recent tour in Germany a thousand questions were asked about 
Franklin. Niimerous applications were made to him for commissions 
in the American army, and his failure to secure them no doubt sharp- 
ened the attacks on him. Schlozer, who had met Franklin in Got- 
tingen, counted himself fortunate in profiting by public interest in his 
publications on the struggle between England and America. 

The story of the German soldier sent by his sovereign to America, 
of life there, and of the return home is told in many versions by con- 
temporary dramatists, from Schiller in his " Kabale und Liebe," 
through a long list gathered by Walz in his exhaustive paper. Some 
of them make quite a feature of the American wives brought to Ger- 
many by German officers. There are at least two families of Newport, 
R. I., who still keep in touch with their German kinsfolk, descendants 
of the marriage of two Newport girls to our friends the enemy, and 
several Southern families have had the same extension of their foreign 
relations. The number of German soldiers remaining and marrying 



Franklin in Germany 7 

in this country must have been quite large, for there are many 
families of note thus descended from Hessians. 

Franklin was too busy a man to make much reference to so brief an 
incident in his long and active life as his short and only visit to Ger- 
many. From it and througli his intercourse with Gottingen professors, 
all men who contributed to and helped make what there was of public 
opinion in Germany, he undoubtedly influenced it, all unconsciously 
perhaps, and thus helped to make the judgment of the people and 
their rulers favorable to the Americans in their struggle for inde- 
pendence. Little as Frederick the Great liked liberty and rebellion to 
gain it, his hostility to the German princes who sold their soldiers to 
Great Britain, after refusing them to him, counted as a factor in favor 
of America both during the Eevolutionary War and later. The treaty 
between Prussia and the United States was a valuable recognition of 
their right to enter the family of nations, and there can be little doubt 
that Franklin gladly saw in it one of the results of his visit to Ger- 
many, and of Ills influence upon German publicists. His own success 
in securing the powerful help of France by the Treaty of Alliance, 
which gave this coimtry in its hour of need both men and money, and 
in making a treaty of peace with Great Britain, almost in spite of 
France, may well justify the belief that he too inspired the Germans 
with a desire to atone for their profitable alliance with Great Britain 
by an early recognition of the American Republic as soon as its inde- 
pendence was acknowledged. 



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